Marc Solis, after a 23-year teaching career, is ready to retire. He told me this over the phone as he trimmed briskets during his lunch break from Heights Elementary School in Laredo, where he teaches special education students. The ten-minute walk to LowPoint Barbecue from the school has become a weekday routine since he opened the restaurant in 2023. “I can’t serve two masters,” Solis told me. To become the pitmaster he hopes to be, Solis needs to make barbecue his full-time job. “I’m going to be taking the plunge,” he said.Solis has been taking steps to get here since 2020. He taught his students virtually during the pandemic and used his extra time to work on his backyard smoking skills. In 2022, he got…

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Nothing much happens on the barbecue front in Del Rio. My full-time job is to travel all over the state looking for the next great barbecue joint. Until recently, I hadn’t been to Del Rio since I started this job twelve years ago because there was no reason to go. This year is different. After Hot Pit B-B-Q closed for good after operating for more than fifty years, a trio of Del Rio natives held the grand opening of their new restaurant, Humo Prime Barbecue.Hervey Huerta, Elias Mtanous, and Michael Willard left the city shortly after graduating from high school. They moved to San Antonio, where Huerta had his first barbecue experience (having never visited Hot Pit back home). It was a spot next to…

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